When You’re Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

2 02 2010

A weary traveler checks into a hotel late at night.  He lays on his bed and drops his shoe, banging loudly on the hard floor; realizing how loud and rude he was being, he softly takes off his other shoe and places it on the floor.  A few minutes passed and a man below can be heard shouting, “Drop your other shoe already!  I can’t sleep waiting for it to hit the ground!”  For the man on the floor below the traveler, he was waiting for the other shoe to drop on the floor; the inevitable conclusion of the man’s anticipation of the undesirable thud.  Cowboy fans have witnessed the shoe drop after 1996 and their third Super Bowl of the ’90s.  Bulls fans witnessed it after Jordan-era.  Meg Ryan dropped the shoe after You’ve Got Mail.  Now, the fans in/(of) Boston are witnessing it happen right before their eyes.

These are the years of the last championship seasons for the teams of The Hub – with the Bruins in 1971.  In a decade, no city has enjoyed more championships than Bostonians in the Aughts.  (Please send refuting emails to Dwight Schrute at beeswax@notyours.com).  2007:  Celtics win their league-leading 17th championship, the Red Sox win World Series for the second time in 3 years and the Patriots win their 4th Super Bowl in 7 years; undefeated, no less.  (It happened.  Yes it did!  Just leave me alone!).  Okay, fine:  2004, Patriots win their 3rd Super Bowl in 4 years.

Since then, fans have parachuted in on the Bandwagon of Beantown from all over the country.   Well, I for one don’t mind all the bandwagoners seeing as how in this day of universally on-demand media anyone can follow any team no matter where they are.  I guess what I’m saying is, there’s nothing you can do about them so we should just live with it.  But I do have a message to those that may choose to stay:  ”Things are about to get rough, so buckle up or get off.”

2010:  the Patriots have expired their 5-year grace period for winning Super Bowl XXXIX.  2007 was definitely good year for the Pats but the first-round debacle of this year’s playoffs to the David Tyree Ravens combined with the humiliatingly, flukey loss to the David Tyree Giants in 2007 can swiftly lead to loss of good faith for their prosperity.

The Celtics are old.  The Big Three can’t hold the team together any more.  Leads aren’t preserved down the stretch without the intimidating defense of a truly healthy Kevin Garnett.  The general manager actively tried to get rid of Rajon Rondo on two separate occasions before giving him an extension this year.

The Red Sox.  I’m holding on to hope that last year’s sweep from the ALDS was an aberration, too.

Despite disappointing finishes the Pats did go undefeated during the regular season and won 18 games in a row, the Celtics and Bulls gave NBA fans an unforgettable 7 game series without KG in 2008 and the Red Sox…well the Red Sox added John Lackey to the rotation.  (I can’t honestly think of something I’m excited for about the Red Sox this year or last year).  The Bruins made the playoffs and lost to the Hurricanes in 7 games.  Silver linings are everywhere.  But how long will that hold?

Spoiled, like the cast of Jersey Shore getting paid to drink and fight.  New Englanders just expect good things to come, easily forgetting hardships that came before this decade.  You’re the father of a kid that will inevitably lose a game of basketball in the driveway because you’re getting older, fatter and slower and your kid is getting more agile, stronger and figuring out your weaknesses.

So what can you do?  I can’t say whether or not I’m handling the situation very well.  Every Celtics game I see, I have no reason to believe that they’ll win the game even with a 20-point lead in the 4th quarter.  I didn’t even predict the Patriots to be in the Super Bowl (but there’s no way I predicted the first-round piss-fest) this year.  The Colts have figured the Patriots out.  The Chargers would have beat them too.  (In hindsight, everyone in the playoffs could have beaten the Pats).

If you’re a bandwagoner and want to jump off, be my guest; you are entitled to your decisions and what makes you happy.  If you’re a die-hard, you can join me and prepare yourself to endure the inevitability that the shoe is getting closer and closer to the ground.  Take the insight of the late sportswriter Dave Halberstam, “If you need a victory by your favorite sports team to give you some kind of enduring emotional upgrade, then you are, I suspect, in real trouble.”

Go out and enjoy life.  No lovable losers here.


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Why Naming Dogs after Sports Athletes is a BAD Idea

9 09 2009

If you’re a twenty-year old kid that wants a dog, do NOT name it after a young sports athlete. Especially if they’re only in their second year and had a great rookie year.  Because three years later, after the sophomore slump and after two World Baseball Classics, you’re going to wish Dice the German Shepherd was named because of your craps gambling addiction instead of the $50 million pitcher that can’t go more than 5 innings without 10 walks.

Over Labor Day weekend, I went back down to my parents’ house to pick up my dog that they were holding on to for a year because of roommate and small-living space issues.  Now that I live alone, I find myself bored late in the evenings during the week and am too worried I’d become crazy if I talk to myself (so I’d rather talk to a dog.  Better?).  As I haven’t lived with him for a year, I look back at him and remember our time together and of the day I went to pick him up at the shelter.  With two friends, we looked at all the animals that needed to be adopted.  I did two loops; I don’t know how I missed him the first time.  He was perfect.  Just sat there in the cage and looked at me instead of acting like…well, a dog in an animal shelter.  Probably more importantly, there wasn’t a stream of his marked territory running out of the cage and into the hallway’s drainage hole (honestly, why put it there so people have two choices:  step in it and let it trace your footprints every time you step, or cautiously step over it so you can get the look that says, “I hope you’re ready to step in it ’cause you’re going to have to if you take one of these home”?).  Another tip for adoption:  they make you give the animal a name.  That’s an understatement.  They don’t let you out the door until you pick a name.

We sat at the counter for about 15 minutes while the workers were getting ready to close for the day.  You just think of words and say whatever comes to your mind, like:  Yawkey.  Fen.  Or…Way, Papi? Eh, I’d rather it be a pitcher. So, Pedro?  Knuckles, Knuckl–er, Knuckleball, knuckleball.  Gyro?  What’s a Gyro?  Dice-K throws it.  Dice!  Dice?  Yeah, Dice…that’s it.  How do you spell it?  Hmm….Daisuke or Dice-K?  Well 5 minutes later, I brought Dice home and he became my little mascot.  Fast forward two years and your awesome, cool pet that has attached so close to you (and vice versa) has the name of a three-year washout that will probably be a fireballer in the National League a la John Smoltz and Brad Penny.  Yes, Brad Penny (after he asked and was granted release from the Red Sox and signed with the San Francisco Giants, then pitched 8 shutout innings in Philly led me the most used but most passionate text message from Sox fan to Sox fan, “Brad Penny! WTF! Really?!”).

The lesson is, if you have to name your pet after an athlete, don’t name it after one that is virtually untested.  Now give me some credit, Daisuke has pitched in his relative big-leagues before.  And constantly threw 150 pitches per game in Japan, so why would I have thought that he would have had a tired arm after last year’s WBC?  Probably because I didn’t know the WBC would still exist by now.  Be smart and name your pet after a Hall of Famer, or a washed-out retiree (purely for comedy, not patheticness.  No Bledsoes, please).  You could go with Yaz, or Pudge.  Madden, or Csanka and Butkus.  Me? I’ll stick it out to the bitter end.  And it will be a bitter end.  However, if Real Life Daisuke ends up on the Yankees…I’ll have to reevaluate the origin of the name.  Like how it’s ironic that his name is Dice and he has no dice?  (Thanks to Bob Barker for controlling the pet population).  Or maybe I should just call him Buddy.


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A Long, Long Time Ago in a World of Sports Far Away

15 07 2009

Alpha-male instincts are at its highest with sports.  My-team-is-better-than-your-team countered back and forth between friends (and the occassional not-so-friends) shared over a drink in your favorite bar.  You had your team and you defended it ’till the end.  The reason your team was superior was justified by anything you belted out at an increasingly higher volume and an occasional sharper tone.  No matter how heated the argument got you felt like Mel Gibson avenging his freedom in Braveheart/The Patriot until someone was dead, covered in his own pool of blood.  Even if it was false  – but that was ten years ago.  A lot has changed since then.

Before the All-Star break, ESPN re-aired the 1999 Home Run Derby in Boston, clearly telling at how different the times are.  The hit-tracker that drew lines from home plate to the outfield was the highlight of production value during that derby.  Ten years from then, the State Farm 2009 MLB Home Run Derby glowed the ball flying through the air much like Fox’s attempt to glow the hockey puck blue so the audience can follow it.  And was able to track the amount of feet the ball traveled on contact – emasculating Bradon Inge trickling the ball 20 feet from home-plate.

Dave Halberstam wrote multiple times, compiled in Everything They Had, about his time reporting in the Vietnam War and befriended a man from Boston (Halberstam himself, a Yankee fan since a little boy) and both would watch the ticker scroll with box scores of Red Sox games and be in awe of the consistency of Carl Yastrzemski’s batting line.   That was the media in the sporting world in those days.  You read it off print and sporting magazines or electronic marquees.  This is how men became accustomed to reading their newspapers, from back to front starting with the sports section – a method I practiced even though I’m in my twenties and a dying newspaper industry.

That’s not how you get your stats now: your cellphone – not merely limited to the iPhone – is the gateway that allows you to look up stats, past and present, mobile applications brought us the ability to look up stats to fire back at your drunken friends in seconds (guys  – drunk and sober – only have an attention span of a couple of seconds).  Twitter gives you updates on trade rumors and firings – a la Kevin Love breaking news on Kevin McHale’s firing from Memphis; more ammo to mercilessly beat down your opponent until they’re in their own pool of blood like Brock Lesnar standing over Frank Mir in UFC 100.  Mobile blogging beat reporters give us instantaneous information of real-time events.  Photographers directly update their pictures online.  Those of us that are lucky enough to subscribe to baseball packages were able to watch Jonathan Sanchez pitch the first no-hitter of 2009 out-of-market from the San Francisco area.   MLB has given Blackberry and iPhone users the ability to watch videos of LIVE games.  LIVE!  (I watched a baseball game during a summer lecture.)  New media has dominated the sporting world in the past ten years.

If Sports had teeth, Media punched it all over the octagon.


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Home Away from Home

11 08 2008

When you’re a fan of a big-market team and the Team With the Most Bandwagon Fans Winner — I think ESPN had a extremely high percentage (greater than 75%) of Sportsnation agreeing that Boston has the most bandwagon fans (…ahem, Cubs fans anyone?) — it’s easy to be target of the worst insults of sports fan-hood…Bandwagon and the worse yet, Fair-weather.  I’ve yet to unleash those two-words of fury towards some people I find myself surrounded by but it has found itself on the tip of my tongue from time-to-time.

How have I avoided being cursed for so long despite my heralding of the recent Boston sports success (how is it that Boston didn’t win TitleTown USA)?  I was lucky enough to be acknowledged for my apparent “non-bandwagoning” but made me realize that Boston’s recent dominance has opened the flood gates for so-called fans that don’t know Big Papi’s real name even though they have a #34 jersey on, or don’t know why we hate Johnny Damon so much (alright, us kids today have used the word so much it’s lost all meaning, taking a line from Dr. Cox, I’ll substitute hate with mega-loathe from now on).

What should I have expected from living here?  About 1,500 miles away from Boston, am I not subject to the same scrutiny and judgement that I am putting others through?  I know that if I were to ever run into a Boston fan at some sports bar I’ll subtly take them through the “True-Fan Test” just to make sure I’m not wasting time by rehashing our favorite Boston moments.  It’s kind of like the time I was at a Naturals game and during pre-game a guy wearing a Boston t-shirt and hat looked my way and gave me the Cool Guy Nod (the kind of nod a guy gives to another guy in which he doesn’t want to seem overly excited) and I acknowledged with a Cool Guy Nod of my own because I was wearing my Papelbon shirt and Boston hat, but as he turned and walked down to his seats I questioned his fan-hood then decided that he wasn’t a bandwagoner because anyone around here can buy a Boston Red Sox hat from Wal-Mart but NO WHERE sells t-shirts — you have to really try and get those (he got an A from the True Fan Test).  A guy I saw weeks before was wearing a leather Red Sox jacket – he got an A plus.

There’s a part of me that finds solace in the Patriots losing the Super Bowl, because now when I see someone wearing a Patriots jersey (no matter how clean it is) I have absolutely no doubt in their loyalty.  That poor soul has gone through thick and thin with the Patriots last season and still displays their loyalty (automatic  A++ from the True Fan Test).  And even during the season up to the Super Bowl, every Pats fan was sitting in front of their TVs watching the Pats try and do what’s only been done once (and despite SpyGate ’07) everyone was collectively pushing for the Pats to come through.  After we didn’t go 19-0, the silver lining is that you knew who was a real fan because anyone that DID root for the undefeated Pats did so with the whole nation betting against, and every week when they got closer and closer, the bets started rising and the fans started becoming more invested in this team.  The other silver lining is that there’s room to top what happened last year, to be Undefeated Champions without SpyGate ’08 looming over our heads (I can dream, right?).

So does that mean that I wish the Red Sox hadn’t won in ’04 and are still looking for their first World Series championship for 88 years and still counting?  Absolutely not!  If the Razorbacks finally won their first NCAA title since 1964 and Hogs t-shirts start selling all over the nation, would I care that there’s a sudden rise in our fan-base?  Hell no!  My sisters asked me if Boston were to start the decline from their apparent peak in sports dominance (knocking on wood), if I were to still want to move to the New England Area, I said yes I would but I never really gave a reason why.  My reason is that even if the Sox, Patriots, and Celtics start tanking year after year (I just dented my coffee table by knocking too hard) I would be surrounded by fans that still continue to loyally support their team through the hard times (while of course vehemently cursing management and players out) and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, because there’s nothing sweeter than a group of people rooting for players and coaches to break out of their respective slumps and emerge victorious.  And that’s something that I would never get to enjoy by living 1,500 miles away from home.

…I was just administering the True Fan Test to myself.

I passed.


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Why I’m on the Edge of Giving Up Sports All Together

4 08 2008

This one is stemming from a recent football game session I had with my friend Austin while wasting time at Best Buy in which I lost to him in our second overtime because (and I’m going to fight this to the very end) my receiver, which has been catching passes all game mind you (I was Boston College), dropped a pass in the endzone and his Safety (of the Razorbacks) came over and caught it for an interception (OK, granted I could have stopped him on defense but again, I was Boston College).

I didn’t stop him; he strolled into the endzone on a running play as his running back shook off a tackle like my linebacker was David trying to tackle Goliath (I’m sure they wrestled each other before David took a rock off the ground and Dennis the Menaced it at Goliath, just makes sense) and I had to endure the silent pity I was receiving from him and our witness Anthony, and I kept telling myself that there was nothing I could do about it as I cursed the sports gods as they laughed at me for the bowel movement I just took a nose dive in.

As I went through the 5 steps of losing: Anger, The Did-That-Just-Happen? Feeling, Denial, Depression, and Acceptance, I told myself it would never happen again or in real life. But wait a minute, it did! Super Bowl! Yeah it wasn’t a deflection but it was a once in a lifetime catch made by a player who has no receiving hands (David Tyree used his helmet). So then it just made me even more depressed that this has happened to me more than once and lead me to question if it’s a sign that I’ve angered the sports gods at sometime in my life. I think it’s because I’m a Razorback fan (the Red Sox can’t be used as an excuse anymore, “bye bye bamino!”).

How much more disappointment can I take as a sports fan? No one likes to lose but I LOVE to win. When a whole outcome is decided by one play that seams so surreal and makes you make the Did-That-Just-Happen Face, it’s really hard to find the silver lining. Red Sox fans knew my pain for 86 years and Cubs fans are silently nodding their heads along. How do you get through the feeling that your stomach has just dropped three feet and you’re currently stepping on it as you walk? How do you not look up at the sky and say, “Really? That bored, huh?”

It didn’t take very long for me to find my answer after I stopped wallowing in self pity.

The answer is that it’s the absolute reason why people LOVE sports! If there were no moments in history that made you jump off your seat and look at everyone in the room and shout, “Holy Shit! Did you just see that?!” sports would be pretty damn boring. Kind of like watching cars go around in circles 200 times or a ball getting kicked back and forth about 400 times. Some of the best moments in history are moments that movie writers can’t possibly script — okay a 12 year old kid will never, EVER pitch for the Cubs because he fell and caused his arm to throw 100 mph pitches. Without randomness we’d never have “The Immaculate Reception” or Jose Canseco’s home run assist. We wouldn’t have Janet’s wardrobe malfunction (yes, its sports related, that’s why Paul McCartney and Prince do the Half-Time Shows at the Super Bowl now).

The best thing about sports is its unpredictability. It’s randomness allows David to stand up against Goliath and win. Looking back, the game played out what actually happened in real-life. Arkansas vs. LSU last year. Multiple Overtimes. Interception in the endzone. Go figure.

Okay, NOW I’ve reached Acceptance.

photo


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